Thai cave rescue: Duangpetch Promthep's death shatters happiest of endings
-
Loading... - Kanawut Ayutthaya
- 17 Feb 2023
- 68 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
We still do not know what caused the sudden death of Duangpetch 'Dom' Promthep at the football academy in Britain to which he had been so proud to win a scholarship last year.
It casts, for the first time, a sad shadow over a story which until now had not lost its power to inspire, to lift the spirits.
The astonishing saga of the Thai boys rescued from the cave in July 2018 was that rarest of things in the news business: a tale with an almost flawlessly happy ending.
When we first got news that a group of Thai footballers had gone missing, I had dashed with my colleagues up to Chiang Rai, and then to the entrance of the Tham Luang cave complex, carrying just three days of clothes.
In my haste I had assumed few people around the world would care for long. The boys would be found, or perhaps they never would. That would be that. It was quite a misjudgement, and in the mud-soaked conditions outside the cave, I would come to regret my packing decisions.
Five days later, with no indication that the boys were alive or where they might be, and Thai rescuers driven out of the cave by rising flood waters, I was interviewed by a Thai television team.
I found I was too emotional to respond. The boys were more or less the same age as my two sons. Dom was just 12 days older than my eldest. Reporting about them day and night, seeing their bikes still chained to the railings by the cave, they had become very precious lives.
Against all the evidence, all of us hoped against hope that they might still be alive.
And then that astonishing moment, when British divers John Volanthen and Rick Stanton found them, calling out in the dark, "how many are you? Thirteen? Brilliant". It seemed nothing less than a miracle.
The journalists at the cave site multiplied quickly, far more than it could accommodate. But we knew getting the boys out would be difficult. So difficult, in fact, that the divers had told the Thai government getting even half of them out alive should be considered a success. Read More…
